


Silent Killer

by Anonymous_Introvert78



Series: NCT Hurt/Comfort [3]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Nakamoto Yuta-centric, Poisoning, Protective Hyungs, Protective Nakamoto Yuta, SUPER YUTA!!, Sasaeng Fan(s), carbon monoxide poisoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-06-24 02:54:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19714819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous_Introvert78/pseuds/Anonymous_Introvert78
Summary: Taeyong was unconscious. Taeil was probably unconscious, too. Yuta felt dizzy and sick, but he hadn’t until he set foot in this house. Something was wrong in this house.The place where they were supposed to feel the safest, where they were supposed to be protected, was trying to kill them.





	1. Nakamoto Yuta

I'm writing a twenty-one part (yes, twenty-one-part) series! One story for each member because I'm overly ambitious and honestly? I just really wanted to see if it could be done. 

I just need to finish tweaking the last chapter before I post this so please be patient for a few days.

**TRIGGER WARNING!!!!!!!!**

This story … Oh my God, this story doesn't have anything triggering in it. That's got to be a first for me. That's a first, right, Juno? Can I get a prize? I'm going to go and make myself a prize.


	2. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
> "Un Village" by Baekhyun (Exo)

It had been a long day.

It had been a really, really long day, and that was Yuta’s excuse for feeling like shit. His muscles ached from dancing for over six hours, his joints felt like they were packed with cement, and he was hungry as hell.

There was absolutely nothing more he wanted in this world right now than to climb into the shower, scrub his exhausted body clean of sweat and stink, and then tumble into a bed that would swallow him whole. In short, he needed sleep more than he needed to breathe.

But his members just weren’t having it. And he loved them – he loved them dearly – but it was nights like these when he couldn’t stand their existence in his life.

“I call first shower!” Jungwoo shouted the second they traipsed over the threshold, toeing off their shoes and depositing their bags in an untidy pile in the corner of the hallway.

“I already called first shower!” Mark countered in outrage but Jungwoo was already prancing up the stairs like a baby gazelle experiencing the joy of long grass for the first time. “You’re a dick, hyung!”

Yuta grimaced, rubbing at his temples, and had to garner all his strength not to curse at Mark as the kid stepped on his foot in his hurry to follow Jungwoo up the steps and battle for the shower.

He was tired, he was antsy, he was hungry, and it wasn’t their fault. Of course, it wasn’t. But they weren’t making it any easier for him, and that made them the perfect targets for his exhaustion-induced irritation. 

Doyoung’s clumsy stumble as he hopped about on one leg, wrestling with his shoe laces, until he collided with Yuta was the last straw.

“Get off!” he snapped, shoving Doyoung away from him with slightly more ferocity than was necessary.

“Sorry,” Doyoung muttered as he finally succeeded in ridding his foot from his converse. “I’m just tired, I guess.”

Yuta snorted contemptuously, not even trying to hide the dramatic way he rolled his eyes at Doyoung’s words. They were all tired. They were all always tired. His dongsaeng should know better than to use that as his only excuse.

“I said sorry,” Doyoung spat, brow furrowed in irritated confusion at Yuta’s rude response to his apology. “What the hell’s wrong with you this evening?”

“What’s wrong with me?” Yuta repeated, and he wasn’t holding back. Not anymore. “Maybe I’m sick of having to teach you the same dance moves over and over and over because you can never get them right!”

“Yeah?” Doyoung shot back at him, folding his arms over his chest. “Well, I’m sorry that not all of us were loaded enough to pay for dance lessons growing up!”

“Oh!” Yuta snorted, grinning mirthlessly, and by now the others were starting to eye them nervously. As though they were waiting for the inevitable explosion. “You know full well that I taught myself! Years and years of blood, sweat and a fuck-load of tears got me to where I am today! I deserve everything I have! I don’t deserve having to teach you the same fucking moves I learnt when I was eleven years old!”

“Yuta …” Taeyong warned and Yuta felt his leader’s restraining hand on his shoulder but he shrugged it off and stepped out of reach.

“I’m sick of you always looking down at me, Doyoung!” he roared, fatigue forgotten in his fury. “I may not be able to sing as well but I could dance laps around you!”

Doyoung had never been one to back down. Doyoung would fight tooth and nail for what he believed was right until his opponent backed down or blood was drawn. And tonight was no different.

“I work harder in a single day than you’ve ever worked in your fucking life!” he bellowed back, advancing intimidatingly until he and Yuta were almost nose to nose. “And unlike you, I never take my frustrations out on other people!”

Yuta’s hand moved without his permission. Elbow extending, shoulder blade flexing, hands reaching, fingers fastening on the fabric of Doyoung’s shirt collar.

None of them had gotten physical with each other in a fight, and he wasn’t sure exactly what he was planning to do but he could see the splash of fear that laced Doyoung’s expression before he managed to iron his features into one of challenging fearlessness.

“You going to hit me?” he whispered, and the next word was spat with so much poison that Yuta was surprised he didn’t drop dead on the spot. “ _Hyung_?”

And Yuta wanted to. For the first time in his life, he actually wanted to hit somebody.

Maybe it was the hunger, maybe it was the exhaustion or the anger or the headache building up between his ears and the nausea chewing on his stomach, but the trigger didn’t matter because Yuta was seriously considering planting his fist in Doyoung’s face. 

Thank God for Lee Taeyong.

“I think that’s enough,” the leader interjected, forcing himself between the two bodies and prying them apart with a hand on each chest. “We’ve had a long day. We’re all dead on our feet, and I don’t know about you guys but I have a killer headache.”

Yuta did, too. Maybe it was the flu. That was the last thing they needed.

“You don’t want to do this,” Taeyong pushed on. “I know the both of you and this always seems to happen when we work ourselves to breaking point. So take a minute, calm the fuck down and then go to bed. If we need to, we can talk about this in the morning.”

He turned his head from left to right, looking each of his dongsaengs straight in the face, warning them to contradict him. But neither of them paid him any attention. They were too busy glowering at each other from over their leader’s head.

And some part of Yuta knew that if he stayed in this house with the noise and the people and the high-pitched laughter and the hormones, he was going to end up murdering somebody.

“I’m going out,” he grunted, giving Doyoung one more glare before retrieving his shoes from the floor. “I need a drink.”

“You can’t go drinking, Yuta,” Taeil chastised from where he was leaning against the wall with his head pressed into the plaster as a sign of his desire to crumple into the land of unconsciousness. “We’re working tomorrow. You can’t be hungover.”

“Then I’ll go for a walk,” Yuta hissed back at him. “I need to get out of this hell hole.”

Taeyong made one final attempt to stop him in the form of a hand around his elbow, but he shook it off and stormed out the front door. They didn’t follow him, and that was exactly what he wanted: to be given his space and to calm down.

He had fully intended on downing several pints of scotch upon arrival at the bar he always visited when he needed a break, but Taeil’s words – as annoying and condescending as they may be – had been absolutely right.

If he got drunk tonight, he would regret it tomorrow morning.

So he sat at the table in the corner, baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, and slowly stirred his diet coke with the straw as he listened to the slowly melting ice cubes clinking against their glass prison.

He shouldn’t have said those things to Doyoung. It was immature and petty and really quite hurtful. The boy was an excellent dancer, working himself to the bone day in and day out in order to make up for the experience he lacked. And his voice was to die for.

Doyoung had been right. Yuta always took his frustrations out on other people. Whenever he’d had a bad day or the manager had scolded him or he’d come across another anti-fan account on the internet, it was always his members who suffered the rebuttal.

It felt like time was passing like it was fighting through treacle – slow and agonised – but when he glanced up at the clock, he was shocked to see both black hands coming together on the number 12.

Midnight.

They had a rule. As a group. Unless they were in the company building with bodyguards and managers and staff members to protect them, they were never to stay out later than midnight.

He had to go home. Now. Or Taeyong would skin him alive.

Nodding his thanks to the bartender, he slipped his mask over his nose and mouth and dipped out the door, skirting around a group of incredibly drunk – _incredibly sexist –_ men swaying about in the street outside, and headed straight for home.

Doyoung would probably be in bed by now, arms folded as he stared at the wall and silently fumed inside his head. Yuta wouldn’t be able to apologise for his behaviour until tomorrow morning. Taeyong, on the other hand, would be wide awake and worried as fuck. Maybe Taeil, too.

He’d be lucky if he didn’t get the back of his head whacked with a wooden spoon for being so late.

_Click._

He stopped. His skin prickled. His heart did a backflip in his chest.

He gave himself a shake. He took a deep breath. He kept walking.

_Click._

His foot caught on a loose slab in the sidewalk as he whipped around, widened eyes scanning the darkness around him for the source of that noise. That clicking noise. The noise that sounded exactly like a phone’s camera shutter.

“I know you’re there,” he announced, surprising himself with the steadiness to his voice despite how badly his legs were trembling. “I know you’re taking pictures of me. At least be man enough to show me your face.”

If this was a movie, scary music would be playing. The audience would be on their knees in front of the TV screen, screaming at the character to just turn and run before they tasted the edge of a knife or the bite of a bullet or the fangs of a vampire.

This is how people were found dead in an alleyway, their only tribute a picture on the news and a name engraved on a stone buried in the ground.

The silent killers, hiding in the shadows as they stalked their victims. They probably enjoyed the thrill of the hunt as they watched their prey gamble carelessly until their ears pricked up and they sensed a predator lurking in the undergrowth.

“Yuta-oppa?”

Fuck.

“I’m sorry I followed you. I just wanted a photo.”

He would rather it be a street thug with a blade or a mugger with the barrel of a gun pointed at his head. He would even take the vampire over this: over the “fans” that thought they deserved an all-access pass to their idols’ personal lives.

The girl stepped out of the gloom, nervous and shy, clutching her phone to her chest as a dull flush crept up her neck to infect her cheeks. She was young, probably still in high school, and Yuta felt his initial anger ebb slightly.

“We’re humans, too,” he told her, the chill in the wind helping to add frost to his voice. “We deserve our privacy just as much as you deserve yours. If you wanted a photo then you should have asked. Following me like this is sasaeng behaviour.”

The girl gasped, shaking her head so violently that she hit herself in the face with her own hair.

“I’m not a sasaeng,” she whispered. “I swear, oppa, I’m not.”

“Then don’t act like one,” Yuta shot back, before he glanced around him at the alleyways eating into the buildings and the streetlamps sputtering pathetically above, and added his final sentiment. “You should go home. It’s not safe to be out this late.”

With that, he was gone, disappearing into the darkness like the superhero she perceived him to be. He could only hope she heeded his advice and ran straight home to her parents and her posters on the wall. He could only hope that she would look up at the faces on that poster and see the people, not the celebrities.

And he could only hope that Doyoung would accept his profound apology.

But he knew the second he slipped his keys into the front door and levered it open that no one would be accepting anything until the following day. It was too quiet for anyone to be awake. They had all succumbed to their bodies’ pleas and closed their eyes for the night.

Yuta shrugged off his jacket, bending down to untie his shoes before he felt a wave of nausea accosting his digestive system and had to press his fingers to his lips to prevent his ramen dinner from making a surprise return.

Definitely the flu.

Craving the cool sensation of water trickling down his throat, he shuffled into the living room and stopped dead in his tracks, feeling a guilty yet fond expression etching itself into his facial features.

Taeil was slumped sideways on the couch, his head lolling at an uncomfortable angle and his arms hanging over the armrest, fingers already tinted grey from lack of circulation. He’d probably fallen asleep still sitting up and had keeled over to come to rest in that position.

“Typical,” Yuta muttered to himself as he crossed the room in a couple of strides. “Couldn’t even lie down like a normal person.”

Taeil didn’t even stir when his dongsaeng’s arms looped around his stomach and gently pulled him upright. His chin knocked against his chest as his head fell and his arms just flopped at his sides, almost as if they were weighed down with lead.

He must have been absolutely exhausted to have fallen so deep.

Yuta slipped his other arm beneath his hyung’s knees and lifted them up onto the couch, twisting Taeil’s body so that he could lie him down properly with his head resting on a cushion and his arms no longer in danger of amputation.

“Dead to the world, aren’t you?”

Somebody had left a blanket folded neatly over the back of the couch – Taeyong, of course it was Taeyong, it was fucking _folded_ – and Yuta spread it over Taeil’s unconscious body as the finishing touch of his loving sincerity.

But now his head was killing him, eardrums threatening to burst, and his stomach was rolling unpleasantly inside his abdomen as though preparing to empty its contents all over the freshly-washed – Taeyong again – carpet.

Positively desperate for water now, he forged on into the kitchen, massaging his scalp through his dishevelled hair, and made a break for the sink. And that was when he saw it.

Taeyong was on his stomach, left cheek pressed into the tiled floor and blue-tinted lips parted in a soft “O” shape. One arm was above his head and the other was reaching out towards the door, begging for help, pleading for safety. And his legs were all tangled.

There was absolutely no way that was a person who was sleeping.

“Hyung?” Yuta whispered, pushing his own dizziness aside as he propelled himself across the floor and dropped to his knees beside his motionless leader. “Taeyong-hyung? Taeyong-hyung, wake up!”

But Taeyong didn’t move. Taeyong didn’t make a sound, not even the slight groan of a person disturbed during sleep. If Yuta hadn’t leant so close that he could feel his hyung’s breath against his face, he would have wondered if he were dead.

His head was spinning as he sat back up, desperately searching for a phone to call an ambulance or something else that would be able to help him in this situation, and his gut flipped one more time before it finally clicked in his intoxicated little brain.

Taeyong was unconscious. Taeil was probably unconscious, too. Yuta felt dizzy and sick, but he hadn’t until he set foot in this house. Something was wrong in this house.

The place where they were supposed to feel the safest, where they were supposed to be protected, was trying to kill them.

Silently.


	3. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
> "Fireflies" by NCT Dream

Out. He had to get them out. All of them.

Whatever it was that had poisoned them was starting to work its darkest magic on him, too, judging by the way his temples felt like they were being crushed in an iron press and his vision was starting to swim.

It was trying to take him, and if it did that then somebody was going to come looking for them tomorrow morning and they would all be dead.

“Oh, God …” His limbs were already starting to feel heavy. “Oh, God, oh, God … Fuck … Okay.”

He rolled Taeyong onto his back. His skin was already greying and if it weren’t for the steadily slowing rise and fall of his chest, Yuta would have started CPR. Instead, he slid his arms beneath his leader’s shoulders and knees and pushed upwards, thighs screaming with the effort of hefting a full grown man off the floor.

Taeyong was lean – skinny and slight – but his deadened weight almost had Yuta buckling as he staggered for the doorway, his hyung’s neck bent over his arm and just hanging there like all his bones had disappeared.

“Too heavy,” Yuta wheezed under his breath as he finally made it to the living room and his eyes landed on Taeil’s unconscious body still stretching out over the couch.

He’d thought he’d been sleeping. He’d thought he’d made him more comfortable. What if Taeyong hadn’t been in the kitchen? Yuta probably would have grabbed his water and gone straight up to bed, never even knowing a thing.

His throat emitted the most constipated-sounding grunt as he hoisted Taeyong’s upper body up and up and up until it fell over his shoulder, freeing his hands so he could hook them beneath Taeil’s arms and yank him off the couch.

There was a dull thud as the eldest’s feet hit the floor and Yuta would have apologised if he wasn’t so focused on trying not to collapse as he stumbled towards the front door, Taeyong slung over his shoulder and Taeil’s body dragging across the carpet as he pulled.

He should have gotten home sooner. He should have been faster. He shouldn’t have stopped to scold that girl. He should have … He should have … He should have …

“Fuck!”

Taeyong was slipping from his back and he had to let Taeil drop to the ground so he could secure his leader before he plummeted a good three feet and face-planted into the wooden panels.

It wasn’t working. It was too difficult. He couldn’t take them both but time was running out.

“I’m coming … I’m coming back,” he whispered, reaching for the door catch with one hand and tightening his hold on Taeyong with the other. “I’m coming …”

Staggering into the outside world felt like inhaling the first breath after spending five minutes underwater and Yuta couldn’t help the cry of pain he gave out as his knees hit the concrete and Taeyong slid from his back to land on the garden lawn with a soft thump.

Yuta didn’t even give himself time to regain his breath or check his leader wasn’t injured before he was pushing himself up off the floor and stumbling back into the hallway where he’d left Taeil sprawled on the doormat.

“… Back …” he finished his earlier sentence with a gasp as the wave of heated nausea washed over him yet again.

He stooped down and had to throw an arm against the wall to stop himself from keeling over before he managed to pick Taeil’s upper body off the carpet and haul him into the biting cold that automatically came with midnight.

Yuta dropped his friend beside Taeyong and bent at the waist, bracing his hands on his knees and taking huge, rattling breaths, in a desperate attempt to fill his lungs with as much oxygen as possible before he was plunging back into the vomit-inducing aroma of his own home.

Others. He had to find the others. They had to be here somewhere. Probably unconscious. Maybe even dead already. How quick did this gas kill?

He checked every ground floor room, but each was empty of a person who had to be saved, and the energy he needed for taking the stairs had already been drained from his slowly-dying body. He barely had the strength to crawl his way to the top.

But then he found Mark. And that strength came right back.

The kid was half in and half out of his bedroom, lying on his side on the threshold with one of his arms contorted horribly beneath his own body. He had collapsed on it, probably as he floundered towards the door after finally realising what was happening to him.

He must have been so scared.

“Hyung’s here …” Yuta murmured as he heaved himself across the landing and took Mark’s skinny little body in his arms. “Hyung’s here … Hyung’s … Hyung’s getting you out …”

It was a miracle he didn’t fall on the stairs, Mark hanging limp as a ragdoll in his grip, obstructing his view of where he was putting his feet. The carpet was worn from years’ worth of feet pounding up and down them. It was a slip-hazard. A death trap.

But Yuta made it all the way to the bottom without falling prey to the dangerously smooth fibres.

The moment he dropped Mark onto the grass outside, clumsy and uncoordinated, his stomach got the best of him and he lunged for the bushes Taeyong had spent hours shaping into perfect leafy orbs. He didn’t have the mental capacity to feel guilty for splattering his hyung’s prized greenery with his own vomit.

No time to stop. No time to breathe. Go back in. Up the stairs. Search. Search. Where were they? Where were they hiding? It wasn’t fair to hide from him when he was already feeling like he was about to faceplant into the carpet and pass out.

Jaehyun! That was Jaehyun! Jaehyun was that! Jaehyun …

“Jae …” Yuta choked out, swiping his fingers over his face in an attempt to clear the sweat from his eyes as he tottered towards the barely-moving body at the end of the landing. “Jae … Hyun … Jaehyun …”

It wasn’t until he was on the floor beside him that he realised what Jaehyun was doing. The boy was holding onto something with one hand, fingers tightly knotted in the fabric, and was using the other to claw his way forwards.

Donghyuck. He was trying to drag Donghyuck towards the stairs even as his lungs shrivelled into prunes of deadened cells and his blood turned toxic in his veins. He was trying to save him even as his brain starved of oxygen and his nerve receptors shut down.

“I’ve got him, Jae …” Yuta spat through gritted teeth as he gathered Donghyuck against his chest and hoisted him up into the air. “Get up … Get up … Jae, get up …”

But Jaehyun didn’t respond. He just stayed there, curled up on the floor, with his recently-vacated hand lying lax at his side. It was almost as if he’d just decided to give up and die now that he knew Donghyuck was rescued.

“Jae!” Yuta gasped out, still gripping his maknae as he kicked out blindly and his socked foot caught Jaehyun in the ribs, eliciting a soft grunt. “Jaehyun, please … Please get up …”

His biceps were screeching at him. His head was spinning. His gut was promising him the bitter reunion with his dinner. He wanted nothing more than to do what Jaehyun was doing: curl up, give up, die. But he couldn’t. And that meant Jaehyun couldn’t either.

“GET UP!” he screamed, and that simple act alone was enough to have him stumbling, shoulder colliding with the wall as it took everything he had not to bring Donghyuck down to the floor with him.

Then he heard Jaehyun whisper something just as his eyes fluttered closed.

“Take him …”

And that was Jaehyun in a nutshell. He existed to protect and protect only, and once that task was completed, he had no purpose anymore. There was absolutely nothing he wouldn’t do for them.

That was why Yuta made his promise aloud as he tripped and stumbled his way down the stairs, repeating the words over and over under his breath and holding onto Donghyuck like the world around him would just disintegrate without that contact.

“Coming back … Coming back … Coming back …”

Their front yard was starting to resemble a scene from one of those apocalyptic TV shows, bodies strewn in every direction, and Yuta added another to the metaphorical pile as he lowered Donghyuck onto the cold, hard gravel.

It could have been a trick of the light or just a hallucination caused by the toxins in his brain but Yuta could have sworn he saw Taeil’s eyelids flutter ever so slightly.

But there was no time to check for sure.

“Coming back … Coming back … Coming … Com …”

He couldn’t see straight. He had to heave himself up the stairs on his hands and knees, pushing away the pain and fighting through the urge to chuck his guts up all over himself.

“Coming … Ba … Ba … Come …”

Gasping out those words was the only reason he made it back to Jaehyun. Allowing the tears to cascade down his cheeks was the only way he could bring himself to take hold of his friend’s hands and heave him to his feet, groaning with the effort.

“Move …” he pleaded between broken breaths, pulling Jaehyun’s arm around his shoulders and trying to forge the way forwards. “Move … Jae, move … Jae …”

But Jaehyun’s legs were almost jelly, his feet dragging along the floor and his chin resting against his chest as he slumped forwards, the entirety of his body weight transferring itself onto Yuta.

Determination was the only thing he still possessed. Determination to stay alive. Determination to save them. Determination not to let a single one of them die. Determination kept him going. It got him down the stairs he would never look at the same way again and out into the horror show waiting for him just outside his house.

Yuta no longer remembered how many he’d saved or how many were still inside as Jaehyun finally lost consciousness and the both of them crashed painfully onto the concrete.

He didn’t want to get up. He could breathe out here, freely, effortlessly. It was comfier, it was safer, the ground beneath him wasn’t trying to take his life away, and it would be just so easy to close his eyes and go to sleep.

A few seconds wouldn’t hurt … Just a few seconds … of sleep …

“No …” he hissed at himself, hands slithering underneath his chest so he could brace them against the gravel and levee his exhausted body into a somewhat vertical position. “No … No … No!”

He would save them. Even if it killed him, he would save them. Or as many of them as he could …

“NO!”

All of them. He would save all of them. Every single one. This industry did not need another tragedy. One less mother needed to receive the worst phone call of her life tonight. God would have to relinquish his hold on one more soul this time.

And it was all because of Yuta.

Jungwoo was on the floor of his bedroom, slumped against his mattress with his eyes half-open, but there was nothing but whites beneath the lashes and the carpet beside him was stained with his own sick.

But even through the haze floating around him, Yuta could see the phone in Jungwoo’s hand. He’d managed to punch in two numbers before the darkness had claimed him. Just one more and he would have been on the phone to an emergency operator. 

Somewhere in the back of Yuta’s sullied mind he was asking himself why he hadn’t just called an ambulance the second he’d found Taeyong, but it was far too late now. The average response time was seven minutes. That just wasn’t quick enough. 

Jungwoo groaned as Yuta dragged him down the stairs, his feet hitting each individual step and his heart thudding against his ribcage so violently that his saviour could feel it through his shirt. He could have a heart attack any minute now.

Jungwoo could die in Yuta’s arms.

But he didn’t. He made it to the front yard with his blood still pumping and his lungs still inflating, no matter how dangerously violent or terrifyingly lethargic.

Yuta stayed there for too long, panting on his hands and knees with his eyes screwed shut in the hope that he could hide from his own pain. It felt like every single part of his body was trying to kill him, eating away at healthy flesh and undamaged skin.

How many more? How many more were still inside? There were … Jungwoo, Donghyuck, Mark, Jaehyun, Taeil, Taeyong … six out here in the darkness, oxygen filtering into their malnourished bodies.

Six … There were ten members in 127 … That meant … It meant … Four more people still inside … Four … He couldn’t go back in there four more times … He would die … But they would die without him … Wait … He hadn’t counted himself … Three more in there … But three times was still too many … Too many … No … Two more … Sicheng was in China … Sicheng was safe … Two more … Twice more … He could do that … He could do that …

But his body wouldn’t let him. It gave up halfway towards the bathroom door. The locked bathroom door.

“Open the door!” Yuta yelled as he picked himself up off the carpet only for his knees to fold when he tried to take a step. “Open the fucking door!”

He forgot about trying to walk. His muscles were spasming too violently and his vision was too blurred. So instead he army-crawled, not trusting himself to be able to take his own weight, and when he finally managed to secure his grip on the door handle, it wouldn’t open.

“OPEN THE DOOR!”

He was crying, pathetically, childishly, hysterically, slamming his palm against the wooden barrier that stood between him and whoever was locked on the other side. How long must they have been in there by now? What if they were already dead?

Yuta’s gag reflex kicked in with only a second’s warning and he just managed to dive to the side before emptying the entire contents of his abdomen. It would be so easy to just lie down and close his eyes. So, so easy.

He screamed.

It felt like his throat tore right down the centre but he couldn’t stop. Bellowing out his pain and frustration was the motivation he needed to fasten both hands around the door handle and shake it until it broke clean off.

Almost nine months ago, Jaemin had headbutted it and it had been faulty ever since. Yuta had hit him with a pillow at the time, but now, as he was shoving the door open, it seemed that the kid’s determination to prove the sturdiness of his skull was going to save their lives.

Johnny had hit his head.

There was blood dripping down the side of the bathtub like some scene out of “The Shining”, and Johnny’s hair was slick with the stuff as the wound just above his eyebrow continued to leak that precious scarlet fluid at a terrifyingly steady pace.

And he wasn’t breathing.

Yuta fell at least seven times while he was dragging his tallest, heaviest friend down the stairs. He had to go backwards, arms clamped around Johnny’s chest, so that his own body would act as a cushion when he slipped. He already had no pulse; he didn’t need for his head to collide with anything else.

And once they were outside, Yuta practically threw himself on top of him, pummelling his fist against his hyung’s chest and screaming at him – begging him – to just fucking breathe!

Sirens in the distance. Someone had called for help. But they wouldn’t come in time. There was still one more inside. One more … Who was it? … Who had he left behind? Who … Who …

Doyoung.

They’d fought. Him and Doyoung. He’d said some unforgiveable things. And now Doyoung was somewhere in that poisoned house and if Yuta didn’t get his sorry ass back in there, he was never going to get a chance to apologise for what he’d done.

If he’d been thinking clearly, he never would have left Johnny’s side, but the gas had done something to his common sense and he no longer knew what was right or wrong. He only knew that if Doyoung died in there, he might as well die too.

Nakamoto Yuta lost consciousness two minutes later, desperately searching for the dongsaeng he was never going to find.


	4. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
> "Borderline" by EXO-SC

Taeil came back with a great, dragging wheeze, fighting against the hands that suddenly clamped down on his arms and tried to keep him lying against the gurney. Something was wrapped around his head, the straps irritating his skin and the sharp outline of the mask encircling his nose and mouth.

“Hey! Hey, it’s okay! Calm down. Calm down. You’re safe.”

He didn’t know who the voice belonged to, but for some reason, he trusted it. And he was just too tired to struggle any longer. His limbs ached too much and his head hurt like hell.

His body was jostled as the vehicle he was in arched over a speed bump and he cracked his eyes open, squinting up at the blank white ceiling and the blurry image of an unfamiliar face looming over him with soothing concern etched into every feature.

“Can you tell me your name?”

The mask was moved from his face, the elastic stretching as it was pulled taught and the figure leaned closer so its ears could hone in on the hoarse, raw whisper Taeil managed to expel from his dried lips.

“Okay, Taeil-ssi. You have to stay calm for me, okay?”

Taeil tried to nod but his head wasn’t moving properly and he couldn’t have been more thankful when the man beside him returned the oxygen mask back to its original position and the fresh air filtered into his poisoned lungs.

“My name is Dojoon. I’m a paramedic. You’re in an ambulance and we’re on our way to the hospital so there’s absolutely no need for you to worry, okay? You’ve got a nasty case of carbon monoxide poisoning but we’re going to take really good care of you.”

Paramedic? Ambulance? Hospital? The last thing he remembered was flopping down on the living room sofa, his stomach doing somersaults and the sour taste of bile crawling up his throbbing throat. What had happened between then and now?

The exhaustion was overwhelming and even though his mind was burning with a thousand questions, he couldn’t help his eyelids’ need to flutter closed. He couldn’t help the blanket of black from wrapping him in its infinite folds, and by the time the realisation hit him, it was already too late for his consciousness.

The others had been in that house, too.

\--------------------------------

When Taeil awoke for the second time, he was already in the hospital with the whitewashed walls and the pale green blankets and the baby blue curtains surrounding his bed on all sides. The machine beside him was beeping steadily but he silenced it by simply tugging the pulse ox off his finger.

He was still in his own clothes, so at least he was spared the embarrassment of knowing some random nurse – male or female – had seen him naked while they draped his unconscious body in one of those ugly polyester gowns, and he ripped the oxygen mask from his face with a wince of pain from the stinging at the back of his eyes.

All he knew was that he had to find the others, and nothing else mattered.

His shoes were gone but he didn’t even feel the coolness of the floor beneath his bare feet as he brushed aside the curtain and took in the hospital around him.

Everybody was busy, moving, bustling, questioning, phoning, note-taking, but every face was a stranger and strangers were not what Taeil was looking for so he turned away from the doctors, nurses and patients and started his clumsy, stumbling search.

Taeyong had been in the cubicle next to him, already sitting up on the bed, shirtless, clutching the mask over his face as a doctor traced goosebump-inducing patterns over his back with the cool disc of a stethoscope.

Taeil was by his side in a matter of seconds, grabbing hold of his knee and asking him softly concerned questions, but the minute he registered his hyung’s face, only one sentence was capable of leaving Taeyong’s blue-tinged lips.

“Find the others.”

Donghyuck and Mark were lying in adjacent beds, their masks fogging up over their faces as they breathed, and their hands stretched out so that their fingers could entwine with each other in the space between the two gurneys.

A nurse was digging a needle into the crook of Donghyuck’s elbow and the kid had his eyes squeezed shut in pain and discomfort and Taeil’s first instinct was to go to him and stroke his hair and tell him it was okay, but Mark was holding his hand, and for now that would be enough.

Jaehyun was still unconscious, his chest dotted with gel pads that each spouted a separate grey wire, looking remarkably like some kind of octopus was feeding off his body as its tentacles carried the murmurs of his heart back to the machine beside the bed.

It was a horrible sight but the nurse was quick to assure Taeil that his best friend was stable. His heart was beating just right, his oxygen levels were coming back up and his capillary refill was starting to return to him. In short, he would be just fine.

So Taeil kept searching, ignoring the lights that popped in front of his eyes, and his increasing desperation led him to the emergency department where he found three images that would haunt his memories for the rest of his life.

He saw the tube that protruded from Jungwoo’s mouth as they wheeled the boy into the elevator, the orderly muttering something about taking him for a chest X-Ray so they could ensure no damage had been done to his lungs.

Half of Johnny’s scalp was covered with a dressing, the blood already seeping through to form a scarlet splodge in the middle of the white gauze, and he had a matching cylinder snaking down his throat as a nurse rhythmically compressed the bag that was attached, pumping air into his deprived lungs.

And then there was Yuta.

Taeil hadn’t even known Yuta was in the house.

“Oh, God …” he choked, bringing his fingers up to his mouth as he watched the doctors switch their positions beside his best friend’s bed.

One of them hopped down from the stool they’d positioned on the floor and the other took her place, layering one hand on top of the other and lacing his fingers together before planting them in the centre of Yuta’s chest and starting to jerk up and down with the force of the compressions.

“How long has he been down?” somebody shouted and it finally, finally, dawned on Taeil that Yuta wasn’t breathing. Yuta wasn’t even alive right now.

“Getting dangerously close to six minutes here!”

“Come on, kid. You did not save all those people just to die now!”

Taeil swallowed the saliva lathering the inside of his throat and his hand groped blindly for the wall beside him so he could steady his quivering legs before they gave out from beneath him.

Yuta had saved them? All of them? How was that even possible? Carbon monoxide killed quickly. It was infamous for it, but Yuta had somehow managed to drag every single one of them out of that house? How much pain had he been in?

“Sir?”

Taeil came back to reality the moment the nurse’s soft fingers rested against his shoulder and he turned to see the kind, sympathetic eyes protruding from above the surgical mask plastered over the lower portion of her face.

“You shouldn’t be in here, sir. You were in the CO poisoning, right? You should be resting.”

“Is he going to die?” Taeil whispered, ignoring her gentle concern and returning his gaze to the bed which held Yuta’s body as his chest caved in beneath the doctor’s fists. “Am I going to lose him?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” she said, slipping an arm around his waist and trying to cautiously guide him back towards the door where she knew she could manhandle him into a bed and inject him with a magic cocktail of drugs that would put him to sleep immediately. “But they’re doing everything they can.”

Taeil allowed himself to be pliable, moving at her command even as his eyes strained to keep Yuta in his sights before the doors swung shut and secured that solid barrier between him and his little brother.

The little brother who had literally died trying to save them.

“Is there anyone we can call for you?” the nurse asked as she sat Taeil down on his bed and helped him to lie back against the pillows. “You and your friends shouldn’t be alone right now.”

“Yeah …” Taeil whispered from behind the mask she was carefully placing over his face. He hadn’t even realised he’d been struggling to breathe. “His number … My phone …”

“What’s his name, love?”

“Doyoung …”

\-------------------------

Doyoung’s safety space had always been the Han River. It was calming and tranquil and peaceful, exactly what he needed when life at home bubbled over and voices were raised louder than they should have been.

He knew that Yuta would never – _never –_ hurt him, but there had been a second in that hallway where he was genuinely terrified that his teeth were about to vacate his jaw. He told himself that it was just the sleep deprivation that had pumped up their testosterone to dangerous levels, and it wasn’t as though he himself was completely innocent.

He’d said some awful things. Truly awful. And he hated the fact that he was only realising that now, when Yuta would probably be back at home, sleeping off his rage and his own guilt.

They adored each other. They’d die for each other. And when you loved somebody that much, it was inevitable that you were going to fight. That’s just the way the world worked, but it also made it a million times harder to apologise.

Somewhere across the river, the clock tower chimed and Doyoung flinched as he was rudely awakened from his reverie. It was already two in the morning, and he still wasn’t home. Taeyong would burst a blood vessel.

He spun on his heel and pointed his feet in the direction he needed but he hadn’t even made it one step before his phone was vibrating against his butt and he dug his fingers into his back pocket so he could silence the buzz.

He’d expected it to be Taeyong or Taeil or Johnny, but it wasn’t. And some part of Doyoung just knew, even before he heard that unfamiliar voice on the other end of the line and before he was sprinting for the main road and before he was flagging a taxi and diving into the backseat.

He had seen it coming but he hadn’t seen it soon enough and that was unforgiveable.

\---------------------------

“Oh my God,” Doyoung gasped out in pure, undiluted relief, as he staggered into the room the nurse had pointed at and immediately threw his arms around Taeyong’s neck. “Are you alright? Everyone’s okay, right? Tell me everyone’s okay.”

He pulled back and crouched beside Taeyong’s chair, scanning the room around him. There were only two beds but there were seven oxygen masks, either clamped over noses and mouths or resting in trembling hands in case they were needed.

“Oh my God …” Doyoung repeated. “You all look like shit.”

Mark gave him a thumbs up, Donghyuck’s bluish lips twitched upwards slightly and Jaehyun gave an appreciative groan from where he was sitting in a chair beside one of the beds, elbows resting on his knees and head dipped low as he sucked in the precious oxygen he’d been deprived of.

But it was Johnny and Jungwoo who really caught Doyoung’s attention. They didn’t even look alive anymore.

The masks strapped around their heads were different to the others’. They were bigger, more circular and virtually obstructed their entire faces from view, the tubes that were connected to the plastic domes hooked up to gigantic sucking-sounding machines.

“They got it worse than us,” Taeil muttered, discarding his own oxygen to the side as he leaned forwards to brush Jungwoo’s hair out of his eyes. “They were in there a lot longer than we were.”

“Who got you out?” Doyoung whispered as his eyes found the stitches arching across Johnny’s forehead and he had to turn away before he threw up. “Who called for help?”

“Someone must have glanced out their window and seen us in the garden,” Taeyong smirked slightly, as though he somehow found this awful situation amusing. “As for who got us out … That would be Yuta.”

Doyoung felt like his entire body spasmed with an electric shock. Why hadn’t he noticed that Yuta wasn’t in the room? Why hadn’t he asked after the person he’d been the most desperate to see?

“Where is he?”

He read their facial expressions. He saw the sadness and the guilt and the helplessness swimming in their eyes and his stomach felt like it was sinking down and down and down until it hit the floor.

“He’s dead?”

He couldn’t be. He just couldn’t, because if he was then the last thing Doyoung would have said to him was screamed in a fit of useless, pathetic anger. He’d insulted him. He’d insulted his best friend and now he was gone. Forever.

“Do, take a walk with me,” Taeil suddenly piped up, stepping away from Jungwoo’s bed and taking Doyoung’s elbow. “It’s too stuffy in here.”

They wandered the whitewashed corridors, occasionally passed by a figure in scrubs or a matchstick in a papery gown, but for the most part, their amble went undisturbed, giving Doyoung the privacy he needed to cry as he walked.

Taeil was slow, a little unsteady, pale as fuck, but he stayed by his little brother’s side and kept a hand on his shoulder until he finally seemed to decide he was ready to start talking.

“They said it was a carbon monoxide leak,” he began, tightening his grip on Doyoung as the younger boy sniffled. “It’s colourless, odourless … That’s why they call it the ‘Silent Killer’. None of us knew a thing. We probably would have died in there if Yuta hadn’t come back when he did.”

Doyoung should have come back, too. He and Yuta should have saved them together. Then Yuta wouldn’t have been on his own. Then Yuta wouldn’t be dead right now.

“He pulled us out,” Taeil muttered, the two of them still walking the halls like a pair of devastated ghosts. “When the paramedics found him, he was the only one still in there. We think he was looking for you.”

There were no words to describe the pain and the guilt coursing through Doyoung’s trembling body. Yuta had died searching for him, trying to find him, trying to save him after everything they’d said to each other. And Doyoung hadn’t even been there.

“They said there’s a chance of brain damage.”

Wait. What?

“He wasn’t … He wasn’t technically alive when they got to him. They re-started his heart and everything but there’s no way of knowing how long he wasn’t breathing for.”

Doyoung choked on his next sentence, “He’s alive?”

Taeil stopped walking, coughing a little into the crook of his elbow before gesturing towards the window he had turned to face. “See for yourself.”

His mouth was a thin line, sombre and solemn, but Doyoung followed his eyeline anyway and took in the sight that lay before him on the other side of that pane of glass, in a room that was whiter than white.

A large see-through case stood in the centre, domed at the top with a pale blue bed inside. It looked like a glass coffin, the kind the dwarves put Snow White in after she’d died. But it wasn’t Snow White inside this particular resting place of transparency.

“Yuta-hyung?”

“It’s called a hyperbaric chamber,” Taeil said from behind him, but Doyoung still didn’t turn around. He was too engrossed in watching Yuta’s motionless body just lie there, chest gently rising and falling and eyes closed. “The oxygen levels are something like three times higher than they should be so they’re using it to try and counteract the carbon monoxide.”

If it weren’t for the terrifying paleness to his skin and the greyish tint to his lips and fingernails, he would have looked like he was asleep.

“He’ll be in there for about two hours and then they’ll take him out and wait for him to wake up, but he might need to go back in a couple more times just in case there was any permanent damage.”

That didn’t matter right now. Whatever … _damage_ … had been done to Yuta was nothing compared to the _damage_ that would have been done to the rest of them if those paramedics hadn’t pulled him out of that house.

They could work through anything else. But not death. Never death. So if Yuta had brain damage, it wouldn’t matter, because they would be there for him and they would love him and one day he would smile again.


	5. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Recommendation:  
> "Run Away" by Bobby (iKON)
> 
> Drama Recommendation:  
> "My Horrible Boss"

“Doyoung?”

Doyoung raised his head, fully aware how awful he must look with his hair tousled and his eyes swollen and his face stained with tear tracks, to see Sicheng standing in the doorway with his mouth hanging open as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

“Hey,” Doyoung managed to croak out and he tried to get up but his legs were too weak. He’d gone too long without food. “It’s good to see you, Cheng.”

Sicheng didn’t answer him. He stood on the threshold for a couple more seconds while his brain tried to comprehend the sight before him, and then he finally stumbled forwards and sank into a chair on the other side of Yuta’s bed.

“What happened?” he whispered as he reached out towards his hyung’s hand but drew back just before he made contact, clearly afraid that he was going to break him. “Why … What happened?”

“Are the others here?” Doyoung swerved, trying to avoid the truth at all costs. He just couldn’t tell Sicheng that he’d left his friends to die in that house. “Kun and Yukhei and that lot?”

“They’re with Johnny-hyung. He’s getting discharged today.”

Doyoung nodded absently, wincing as he saw Sicheng take hold of Yuta’s hand with so much care, like he was handling glass. He knew he should be with Johnny right now. He’d only visited him once since he’d woken up, but no matter how many times Taeyong had tried to drag him from this room, he just couldn’t bring himself to leave.

Couldn’t bring himself to look away from Yuta just in case that machine beside the bed sputtered into one, endless note that symbolised the almighty flatline.

“When was the last time you ate, Doyoung? Or slept?”

Doyoung didn’t want to answer that question, namely because he just couldn’t remember. He’d been in this room for what had felt like forever, listening to the heart monitor and the clock and the gentle sucking sound of the oxygen pumping mechanically through Yuta’s body.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured, completely out of the blue and unsure who he was even addressing. “I’m so, so sorry … I …”

“He’s going to make it,” Sicheng interrupted but it was clear that those words were for him and him alone. “He’s … He’ll make it … Right? You hear me, hyung? Wake up … Please …”

Doyoung closed his eyes. He couldn’t watch. Couldn’t see Sicheng clinging onto Yuta’s hand as he begged and cried to the boy lying there on the sheets with a tube sticking out of his mouth and his skin the same colour as the gown they’d put him in.

“You look really … really ugly right now,” Sicheng continued, words slightly slurred through his tears. “Your hair’s greasy, your lips are all cracked and you’ve got a spot on your cheek right here.”

Doyoung looked back up just in time to see as Sicheng reached out and brushed the blemish with the tip of his finger, and Doyoung couldn’t help the soft, sad chuckle that spluttered from his dried throat.

“I should take a picture and post it online, show the world how terrible you look. You’d hate that, wouldn’t you, hyung? You’d kill me, I know you would. But I’m going to do it anyway.”

He pulled out his phone, tears still streaming without a care in the world, and Doyoung heard the quiet click of a camera shutter before the boy put the device back in his pocket and re-fastened his grip around Yuta’s hand.

“I’m going to post it,” he threatened. “So you’d better wake up quickly and stop me. I’m going to do it unless you wake up right now and stop me … Come on, hyung … Come on and stop me …”

But there was nothing, just the repetitive beeping pattern accompanied by the thin green line that peaked in rhythmic spikes. Doyoung didn’t know if Yuta couldn’t hear them or just couldn’t respond, but he hoped that, wherever he’d drifted off to, he was fighting his way back to them.

“I need you to wake up,” Sicheng suddenly wailed, pitching forwards and burying his face in Yuta’s shoulder. “I need … I need you to wake up be … because if you die then … I’m going to kill you.”

It wasn’t fair, Doyoung thought as he watched his best friend sobbing into his hyung’s ugly paper gown. It wasn’t fair that they’d had that fight. It wasn’t fair that Yuta had come back and he hadn’t. It wasn’t fair that Yuta had to be the one to pull them from that house.

And it certainly wasn’t fair that Yuta was going to die after saving so many people.

He deserved to wake up, not just because they wanted him to and they needed him to, but because he had to get some kind of award. Some kind of medal or trophy or at least a handshake with the head of the police station or whatever. He had to be hailed as the hero he was and he had to be alive for it.

\---------------------------

Music.

He liked music.

He’d always liked music.

Music was part of his job.

Right?

He musicked for a living.

But this song was sad.

He didn’t like sad music.

He liked happy music.

Music he could dance to.

He was a good dancer.

Change the song.

He wanted to change the song.

The voice was beautiful.

Almost like an angel.

Maybe it was his angel.

Come to take him home.

So he could sleep.

So he could rest.

He was tired.

Maybe he should rest.

But the song was sad.

He wanted to change it.

Open his eyes.

Change the song.

Make it happy.

So he could dance.

He liked dancing.

Wasn’t sure he could live without it.

“Hyu … an y … hear … e?”

Someone talking.

Talking to him?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Doesn’t matter.

Change the song.

Make it happy.

“…eeze … ha … you … do … ight?”

Open his eyes.

Move his hand.

Reach for the music.

Change the song.

Make it happy.

Make them all happy.

“Yuta!”

\------------------------

Prying his lids apart was a battle all on its own, and when he finally managed it, the world around him was so bright that he had to screw them shut immediately for fear that he would go blind.

But then he felt the fingers squeezing his hand. Squeezing it hard. Hard enough to leave bruises. But for some reason, he didn’t mind so much, because it felt comforting. It anchored him to consciousness and gave him the motivation he needed to try one more time.

To try and see the universe he thought he’d left forever.

“Hi.”

“Hey,” he croaked back, blinking sluggishly until his vision managed to clear enough for him to make out Doyoung’s tear-soaked face hovering above his bed.

The music had stopped, and it was only now that Yuta realised Doyoung had been singing. His little brother looked dead on his feet, pale and pasty and like he’d been crying for a week, but he still clung to Yuta’s hand with all the strength he possessed. 

“Can you breathe okay? I can get a nurse if you need …”

“No,” Yuta whispered, wincing at the hoarseness to his voice. The oxygen cannula threaded beneath his nose, cool surface brushing his cheeks, was doing a perfectly good job of easing the air into his lungs. “I’m good.”

“I’m going to call the others, okay?” Doyoung told him. “Just hang on a second.”

The others.

The others.

The others.

Now he remembered.

Doyoung’s yelp of shock was drowned out by the sound of Yuta’s own blood pounding in his ears as he shot up from the pillows with a panicked gasp.

Immediately, his head began to swim, stars exploded in front of him and he pitched forwards to clutch his head in his hands, drawing his knees up to his chest in an attempt to lessen the agony accosting his body.

“Hyung!” Doyoung called out. “Hyung, it’s okay. It’s okay. You have to stay calm. Everything’s okay.”

It wasn’t okay. He had to find them. He had to know they were safe and breathing and alive. And Doyoung, too. He had to find out if someone had saved Doyoung. Because he hadn’t been able to. He’d left Doyoung in that house to die. He had to know … Doyoung …

Wait.

“I’m right here,” Doyoung was saying and the moment that Yuta raised his head, his dongsaeng threw himself forwards to pull him into a hug that would crush his bones. “I’m safe and so is everyone else. You got them out. You did it. They’re all okay. I promise you, hyung. They’re all okay. Lie back down now. It’s okay.”

A hand cupped his neck and Yuta allowed his aching body to be returned to the blankets, repeating Doyoung’s words to himself again and again, just to ensure his brain understood that the others were alright.

“Tell me …” he rasped. “Tell me what happened.”

Doyoung’s bottom lip trembled, but he didn’t hesitate in supplying his injured hyung with the information he desired.

“I left after our fight. I went to the Han River to cool off, and then I got the call that you were all in the hospital. That was … Hyung, that was three days ago.”

If Yuta had the energy, he would have choked, but instead he just blinked up at Doyoung as an invitation to continue.

“Johnny-hyung hit his head pretty hard, but he’s already up and talking and worrying about everyone else, and Jungwoo was really, really sick for a while but he’s a lot better now. The one we were most terrified for was you, hyung.”

Doyoung was talking but the only thing Yuta was hearing were the words they’d screamed in each other’s faces during that argument. That stupid, stupid, stupid argument. And he opened his mouth and said the exact same thing Doyoung said at the exact same time.

“I’m sorry.”

They stared at each other for a split second, and then Yuta giggled. It was a strangled sound that immediately had him coughing horrifically, but it was worth it to know that Doyoung was sorry, too. That he wasn’t angry.

“Really, hyung,” Doyoung said, still serious as anything. “I … I’ve been sitting here for three days, trying to come up with the best way to apologise to you but I couldn’t think of anything to say other than ‘sorry’.”

Yuta took his hand, squeezed it, and looked him dead in the eye.

“It’s okay,” he told him. “I’m sorry, too, so it’s okay.”

“Hyung, you almost died saving seven people. I don’t think you need to say the word ‘sorry’ ever again. Can we just … forget the entire thing?”

Yuta smiled again, his lips aching from the excessive movement, but he seemed to infect Doyoung with his happiness, so he didn’t mind.

“I don’t think we can do that,” he whispered. “If we hadn’t fought, we wouldn’t have left the house. Then I never would have found Taeil-hyung and Taeyong-hyung.”

Doyoung seemed to get it now, rubbing a hand over his face as he chuckled in exasperation.

“So basically, what you’re saying is that if you hadn’t told me I’m a terrible dancer, we would all be dead right now.”

“Exactly. I might have to do it more often.”

**An extra chapter for this story was written by the incredibly talented 20thcenturyhobi and there's absolutely no way you can read this without reading that as well. It's called "aftermath" and it focuses on Johnny and Ten and it's just so sweet that I wish I could take credit for it but I can't so please go read it for yourselves!**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't feel like this story is up to my usual standards so I'm sorry for that but thank you for all the kind words and Kudos!!
> 
> The next story is already planned so I'll give it a few days before I start posting. Let me know who you want me to write for or who you think I'm writing for :)

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments really help with my motivation and confidence so if you have a spare moment, let me know what you think! Have a great day :)
> 
> Shout out, as always, to my adopted daughter, Juno! Couldn't do the things I do without you!


End file.
